By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org Mercedes Dodge was raised by first-generation immigrant parents from Peru in a modest home in a rural part of southeastern Texas, where there weren’t many health care providers. Sometimes they had to travel to Houston, over an hour and a half away, to get basic health care.
Partly because of that experience, Dodge became a physician assistant. Since 2008, she has provided psychiatric and primary care services to adults and children, many of whom come from communities like hers. Dodge, who now lives in Austin, Texas, has built up a loyal base of patients, including many who are part of military families.
But when any of them move out of Texas, she has to stop treating them, even via telehealth, unless she gets a license to practice in that state. “I do my best and collaborate with them, but they already feel alone,” Dodge told Stateline. “I wonder, ‘Why can’t I be the glue? Why can’t I step over state lines and provide the care that they deserve?’” Physician assistants , commonly known as PAs, are licensed clinicians who have a master’s degree and can practice in a range of specialties.
Their three years of training typically includes 3,000 hours of direct patient care, and they are an increasingly critical part of the health care workforce, which in many states isn’t keeping pace with a growing and aging population. By 2028, the nation as a whole will be short some 100,000 critical health care workers — doctors, nurse.